Hunger is a real problem in Alamance County. Every day, families and individuals in our community struggle to put food on their table. Three local soccer organizations are now coming together to do something about it. The Mebane Youth Soccer Association (MYSA), the Burlington Soccer Club (BSC) and the Burlington Recreation Department are organizing a “Kick Hunger in the Can” food drive in support of Loaves and Fishes Christian Food Ministries. BSC and MYSA will be collecting non-perishable food and consumer products during all recreational and travel soccer matches held the weekend of April 12-14.

Parents, players, and spectators are encouraged to bring one item per person to donate. Collection bins will be available at the Mebane Soccer Complex concession stand for MYSA matches and Springwood concession stand for BSC/Burlington matches. “This is a great cause that we are excited to support. A special thanks to all involved with MYSA, BSC, and Burlington Recreation for making this happen,” said BSC Executive Director Taylor Saxe. “We are happy to come together with BSC and Burlington Recreation to help support Loaves and Fishes in their mission to fight hunger in Alamance County,” said MYSA president Alan Huffman.

According to Loaves and Fishes, the items that are most in need include: Canned goods with meat (ex. Vienna sausages, ravioli etc.) and canned fruit

Recently the Mebane Youth Soccer Association (MYSA) celebrated “Silent Saturday”. The main purpose of Silent Saturday is to just let the kids play and have fun. “Silent Saturday” is a throwback to the old days when kids would just play after school and on weekends without regard to who was winning and losing or repercussions for poor play and decision-making.

The goals of Silent Saturday are:

-To emphasize that soccer is a “players’ game”.

-To permit players to talk to each other on the field, free of sideline distractions.

-To foster independent thinking of our players, letting the game be the teacher.

Registration for the Fall 2012 Recreational Soccer Season is now open and will run through June 15th, 2012. Registrations received after June 15th will be subject to a $15 late fee.

NOTE!!! If your child plans to tryout for a travel program, register then for ‘Travel Tryouts’ instead. If they do not earn a spot or decide to play Recreation, you can register for Rec in June. If you register for Rec now, you won’t be able to also register online for Tryouts and will need to use a paper form.

Please remember that your child’s uniform is ON LOAN. All uniforms (Jersey’s and shorts. NOT socks) must be turned in to your team manager at the end of the season, even if you plan on playing in the Spring. This ensures we have uniforms for everyone next season. If you have lost all or part of your uniform or it is damaged beyond normal wear and tear, you will be responsible for purchasing a replacement ($30 for the complete kit or $20 for the jersey and $10 for the shorts) Thank you for your help in ensuring all of our teams are properly outfitted each season.

Managers – if you KNOW you’ll return next season – simply email the uniform coordinator ([email protected]) when you have all uniforms on hand or list any that you could not get back. If you are unsure if you or your coach will return in the spring, then arrange to turn your uniforms in to the coordinator before December.

The Rec Tournament is coming up! Given the formats we use, don’t assume you are eliminated – ALWAYS check the schedule, which is updated every morning. You don’t want to forfeit when you still have a chance to advance.

Once the Rec Tournament is over, the Mebane Soccer Complex will be CLOSED to allow the winter grass to strengthen.

If you find your team near the bottom of the standings or it feels like you rarely won – it’s important to stay focused on what REALLY matters. Did your child improve as a player and did they have fun? Most kids forget about losses or the score faster than you’d think. So remember that it’s natural to be disappointed after a loss or a tough season, but your kids follow your lead and if they see you dejected or upset after a loss, they’ll think they did something wrong and stress about it. Highlight the good things they and their team did and encourage them to try harder next time. This is especially true during the tournament – the pressure is a little higher, emotions stronger, and healthy competition is a good thing as long as everyone keeps perspective. At the end of the day it’s a game and who wins/loses is quickly forgotten by those that matter most – the kids.

A number of our travel teams, especially at the younger ages, are looking for some additional players. Our travel program is similar to Recreation in that teams practice twice a week, play 1 (or occasionally 2) matches per weekend, and you ‘travel’ at most 4-5 times during the regular season (often to Burlington, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, or Greensboro) The biggest difference is players get professional skills training once a week and they get to play teams from outside of Mebane. Supplemental tryouts will be held Sunday November 13th!!! Players do NOT have to be super stars, especially at the younger ages, just excited to play soccer and wanting to get better. Complete details can be found at: http://mebanesoccer.us/2011/11/mysa-travel-team-supplemental-tryouts/

Registration for the Spring Rec season will begin on or around November 15th. We’re trying to reduce/eliminate late registrations, so please don’t forget and wait until mid-January. In addition to triggering a late fee, it makes our job harder trying to plan for how many coaches we’ll need and balancing out the teams.

Coaches/Managers – PLEASE make sure all your matches are properly scored! We use the standings to seed the tournament brackets, so please check that ALL your completed matches have scores.

The tournament schedules and rules can be found at http://mebanesoccer.us/current_season/fall-tourny/ Given the formats we use, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to take scheduling requests into account, so please make every effort this one week to adjust and accommodate the matches as when you play often depends on previous results. We’ll plug in teams into the brackets as the standings finalize.

Don’t lose sight of why we do all this every Fall and Spring – for the kids to learn soccer and have fun. Keep that in mind during those close matches during the tournament – stay positive, let the coaches coach, and the referees officiate. Nobody is perfect, mistakes will be made, and life will go on. We’re all doing our best to ensure the KIDS enjoy themselves. See you on the fields!

The MYSA had almost 800 players on 90 teams participate in our Spring 2011 Recreational season. From age 4 up through 18, these players kicked off their season in the chill of February and wrapped up their season with our seasonal end of season tournament in the warm temperatures of May. Below are the Spring 2011 Regular Season and Tournament Champions… Read the rest of this entry »

We have our Spring Season upon us and right around the corner, we have games starting up! At the beginning of each season, we like to have a coaches meeting to make sure all of the coaches are calibrated with the MYSA Coaching philosophy and to offer some support to some of our newer coaches.

This weekend, we will be holding two sessions and we would like you to attend one of the two sessions. The sessions will be Saturday and Sunday from 4:00pm-5:30pm. We are planning on having age group specific drills and coaching suggestions on both days. We will divide the groups up and there will be a Licensed Tenured coach running each group. This should be a very informative session. We will have handouts for you to take home and to take notes on (please bring a pen). Also, please wear soccer type clothes, as we will need volunteers for each group to participate in the drills.

If you would please reply to [email protected] to confirm which session you will be at, that will help us determine the number of POD’s to have. Please also include the age group you are coaching. If you cannot make it, please let me know that as well, and I will work out a time to get you the information. We look forward to seeing you this weekend!

If you are a newly assigned team manager or think you may be interested in managing a team in the future, the league will be holding Team Manager Workshops on February 17th and February 21st from 7-8pm at IT Xpress at the corner of Third and Clay streets downtown. You only need to attend ONE session, not both. Attending one of these informative sessions does NOT commit you to managing a team, but will give you an overview of the manager’s responsibilities.

New managers are required to attend one of these workshops.

For more information about managing a team, contact MYSA’s Director of Managers:

The Recreation rosters for the Spring 2011 season have been released. Coaches should start contacting their teams ASAP. Parents – login to your MYSA account and you will see your child’s assigned team and links to the paperwork they need to bring to practice. Note – the birth certificate information is out of date, so if you’ve already turned one in – you are good.

Coaches will call asking for preferred practice days/times, but please remember we are scheduling 100+ teams this season and field space is at a premium. If you find your child’s team practices at a time you cannot make – don’t drop out! Contact your coach and ask them to tell their division coordinator that your child needs to be on a team that practices on which ever day works better. If you don’t hear from a coach in the next week, let us know!

The unusual winter weather we’ve had, coupled with Easter being very late, has compacted our schedule this season. Matches will begin two weeks after practices start, so please have patience as some teams may not have uniforms done by the first game, etc. and please try to get your paperwork turned in at the first practice!

The Fall 2010 Recreation Tournament was our league’s largest Rec tournament so far, with six divisions. It also represented our league’s goal of moving away from single elimination brackets to more exciting group play or double elimination formats. This ensured each team would play at least two matches in the tournament and have plenty of chances to show off all they had learned during the season. Coaches – if you have team pictures of your championship or finalist team (or blurbs about your experience), please send them in so we can add them! Send them to us at [email protected].

The Fall soccer season is always the ‘season of change’ in youth soccer. With the soccer ‘year’ running August 1st to July 31st, this is the season the league will often work to improve our programs and make changes based on the past year or years.

I wanted to share a few of these with you to ensure everyone understands what the league is trying to accomplish and the steps we’re taking to constantly improve our programs.

Please take the time to read this entire email as it highlights numerous things the league is doing to ensure our programs are still the best they can be. We have held extensive discussions this summer over numerous issues and are doing our best to enact changes we believe are in the best long term interests of the players – at all levels.

As you can see, we’ve finally gotten our mailing lists back online. We apologize for the lack of communication late last year. We’ll be sending a number of announcements in the coming week to get caught up – so bear with us.

Registration for the MYSA’s Fall 2010 Recreational and TopSoccer seasons has begun! Registration will continue through July 4th, 2010. Registering online is EASY! Simply login to your parent portal (or create an account if you don’t have one) and follow the instructions.

Make sure you select the proper level in the ‘Registering For’ field. Click ‘Register a New Player’ to register a child who has never played for the MYSA before. If your child has played before, they’ll be listed in your account – simply click the ‘Register for Fall 2010′ button. NOTE – you may be asked to update your contact information. This does NOT register your child! Until you see ‘Registered on xx:xx:xx xx/xx/xx’ next to your child’s name AND have received a confirmation email – they aren’t registered!

Registrations received after the deadline will be subject to a late fee. Players who plan to tryout for an MYSA travel team should NOT register for Recreation until after the travel rosters are released! They should register for ‘Tryouts’ instead.